Sensory Team Lead

This individual will be responsible for leading, coordinating, and executing all sensory activities on and off-site. The successful candidate will be responsible for developing the recommended learning plans in addition to operation, maintenance, organization and cleanliness of all sensory panel activities. This includes working with project owners and third-party groups to design the testing needed, identify all resources, interpret test results, and report out to key stakeholders across the organization. This role will collaborate with the Customer & Market Insights (CMI) team to develop consumer learning plans that integrate sensory with customer assessments, as needed for projects. This person will serve as the Menu Services SME on all projects that require sensory analysis requiring organizational influence and autonomy in decision making in order to maintain project deliverables and meet deadlines. This individual will partner to document sensory specifications.

This individual will have the ability to build strong relationships and provide leadership to internal partners to facilitate the execution of the sensory program. This individual must have the ability to plan, organize and execute multiple sensory initiatives from concept to stewardship and may also provide training support as needed for production of training materials.

The Sensory Team Lead will report to the Sr. Principal Team Leader of Menu Services and serve on the Menu Services Leadership team.

Our Flexible Future model offers a healthy mix of working in person and virtually, strengthening key elements of the Chick-fil-A culture by fostering collaboration and community.

1. Lead all Sensory related activities for domestic and international business.

• Lead, coordinate, and execute the design of sensory testing
• Interpret sensory data for organizational projects
• Document sensory procedures, specifications, and activities within Catalyst
• Ensure support for all sensory events that occur within the development process for Menu, Production Design/Equipment and Packaging.
• Develop and maintain budgetary discipline for all Sensory resources; staffing, inventory and equipment
• Ensure all sensory work meets project timelines and cost targets
• Evaluate and benchmark sensory practices and performance for continuous improvement
• Coordinate organization and scheduling of all sensory activities
• Schedule and coordinate contractor teams needed to accomplish effective operation of sensory projects
• Ensure all contractor team members are practicing Chick-fil-A procedural compliance
• Ensure all sensory team members are following food safety best practices
• Ensure sanitation and maintenance of all sensory equipment and facility
• Maintain sensory inventories: frozen, fresh and dry product

2. Refine and develop sensory lexicons for new and existing Chick-fil-A products.

• Calibrate the organization on target characteristics for Gold Standards
• Integrate critical product characteristics into finished product evaluation process

3. Identify, develop, strengthen, and maintain vendor relationships.

4. Collaborate and strengthen integration with Customer & Market Insights (CMI) as needed for customer testing.

5. Assist Training Teams as needed to convert work methods into training materials of various formats.

6. Participate in menu-related project teams as Menu Services SME as needed.

7. Lead Sensory Team

• Supervises and manages scheduling of the support team
• Collaborates to establish work schedules, assignments and reviews results
• Supports people leader performance assessments of support team
• Ensures training and development of sensory support team
• Initiates personnel actions/ decisions for scheduling
• Qualifies and maintains internal relationships to support future organizational goals on product quality metrics

Skills and Abilities:

• People: Personable and approachable. Exhibits strong interpersonal skills that encourage team cooperation, promotes enthusiasm and motivates relationship-building.
• Excellence: Gives personal best every day; demonstrates positive attitude and confidence; sets high standards and meets self- expectations; pursues everything with energy, drive, and a need to finish; is committed to and works actively to growing and developing capabilities and capacity; seeks feedback on performance and acts upon feedback received; practices accountability.
• Collaborator: ability to bring diverse groups across internal and external teams together to work across multiple disciplines, and successfully lead those SMEs toward a common outcome.
• Passion: Go-getter with the relentless pursuit of excellence in a competitive, changing landscape.
• Communication: Is able to write clearly and succinctly in a variety of communication settings and styles; can get messages across that have the desired effect.
• Creativity: Thinks across disciplinary lines; uses the insights or techniques from one discipline to take on the challenges of another. Passionately curious. Thinks and learns and practices their craft all the time.
• Complex Decision-Making: Can solve even the toughest and most complex of problems; is a quick study of the new and different; adds personal wisdom and experience to come to the best conclusion and solution, given the situation.

• 3-5 years of professional work experience in a sensory science capacity 
• Bachelor's Degree in Food Science or similar technical discipline 
• Proven track record of excellence in leadership, problem solving, and analytical skills
• Excellent communicator of technical information for non-technical audiences.
• High attention to quality and detail
• In-depth project management experience
• Experience in designing experiments, process and testing
• A versatile mind and proven ability to influence key stakeholders along the project decision track and across multiple areas of the organization
• Ability to raise, manage, and mitigate project issues and risks
• Proven success in multi-tasking and managing multiple project deadlines simultaneously while quickly adapting and re-prioritizing work based on the needs of the business
• Experience in supporting the work of multiple leaders
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office and/or Apple computer software applications
• Proficiency in math and statistics
• Maintains highest level of confidentiality

• 5+ years' of professional work experience in a sensory science capacity
• Chick-fil-A Restaurant experience
• Formal training in sensory science
• Training in statistical process control
• ServSafe Certified
• Experience managing a trained panel
• Experience integrating sensory and consumer insights data in order to make business decisions